External and Internal Barriers to Urban Circular Economy Transition in an Early Phase: The Case of Critical Raw Materials

Abstract This article contributes to expanding the literature on and understanding about urban circular economy (CE) transitions towards circular cities, with a particular focus on the circularity of critical raw materials (CRMs), by identifying barriers in the transition’s exploration phase. We collected our empirical research data from 7 Finnish cities by interviewing 14 administrative officers responsible for procurement and for CE development and strategies. According to our findings, financial, institutional, policy and regulatory, technical, knowledge, and social factors are both internal and external barriers that city governments face in preventing urban CE transition of CRMs. Our findings suggest that an overarching problem with the identified barriers is regarding knowledge. Furthermore, we argue that intervening in local transformation paths towards circular cities requires the understanding and development of multilevel interactions between actors and their possibly conflicting interests. This contributes to the current understanding of early phases of urban CE transitions, that is, how knowledge deficits between multilevel systemic urban CE transitions should be addressed.